


Breathe In, Breathe Out

by concerningwolves



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Alternate Canon, Comfort, Fluff, Friendship, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Loki and Bruce Banner friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 06:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14731964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concerningwolves/pseuds/concerningwolves
Summary: Loki is no longer pulling the strings, and his new lack of freedom provides a remarkable opportunity for discovery.Alternatively, the one in which Loki finds a strange companionship and understanding with Bruce Banner, who just wants to enjoy his tea in peace.





	Breathe In, Breathe Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DictionaryWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Brought To Justice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14359062) by [DictionaryWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites). 



> This work is based on (and within) Brought to Justice by the fantastic DictionaryWrites. I'm obsessed with their characterisation of Loki, and it got me thinking about the untapped possible links between him and Bruce. I had a lot of fun writing this and discovered that I actually love Banner's character too which was... surprising, to say the least. 
> 
> The title is taken from the song Human by Of Monsters and Men (a definite theme song for this characterisation of Loki, in my opinion). Enjoy! Xx

Loki closes his eyes and allows his spine to curl, his back to sag, his head to roll back. There is nobody around, and the late evening sunlight is bleeding from the room. He watches it trickle over his arm, turning it gold, and leans his chin on one curled knuckle with his elbow propped on the wing. Neon ghosts shimmer above the rush of headlights, and the sky is stained a wounded, bloody red. Loki bites the inside of his cheek and looks away. He has been looking out at the same view for less than a month, and he already hates it. 

With an impatient click in the back of his throat, Loki gestures with his free hand. The view dims until all that Loki can make out are the drifting lights that wink like fireflies beyond the magical darkness of the glass. It isn’t much better, but at least it’s peaceful. At least he can allow himself to pretend. 

And then the light overhead clicks on. 

Loki’s spine snaps upwards and his shoulders tense, and Loki catches himself wondering what Rogers 

_ (Steven) _

might have to say about using his body as an act.

Loki turns to Banner with the slow, serpentine regality that he has been perfecting for millennia. He hates having his solitude interrupted, but Banner has come prepared with a peace offering. In each hand, he holds a glass cup of herbal tea, the capsules containing the leaves still bobbing near the surface. Banner motions with one of the cups and Loki nods in acceptance, never once breaking his arch gaze as Banner shuffles over in his slippers to put the cup down on the coffee table. 

“My gratitude,” Loki says. Banner gives him one of those lopsided little smiles and seats himself on the settee, fumbling for somewhere to set the teaball down without staining Stark’s lacquered wood tables. Loki tuts and curls his fingers. Both teaballs disappear. Banner looks up, mouth opening in a soundless question. “They’re in the kitchen sink.” 

“Oh. Right.” Banner cradles his cup in his hands, the sleeves of his baggy knitted sweater between skin and glass. Loki cannot take his eyes off Banner; cannot reconcile the green beast that had so battered him with the small man dressed in what Loki believes would be called  _ grandpa-clothes _ , complete with fluffy socks and baggy trousers. “Do I have something on my face?” Banner asks with a laugh composed entirely of air. 

Loki switches his gaze from Banner to the pale blue throw blanket behind his left shoulder, selecting his next words carefully. “I have something I wish to ask you, Doctor,” Loki says at length and  _ damnit _ , the words burn like ice inside his raw throat. Banner raises an eyebrow and leans forward in an attentive gesture, his face open and listening. 

Loki drags in air through his teeth.  “Am I supposed to become like you?” 

“Excuse me?” Banner looks taken aback by the question, and Loki raises one hand to stop him from saying anything more. 

“Allow me to rephrase,” Loki says instead, “I am not a human, and although I comprehend it, your concept of humanity is not one that I understand for myself. Yet I feel that that is what you expect me to become.” 

“Well… yeah. That’s basically what we mean by humanity, right? Inherent goodness.” 

“You don't sound very sure about that.” Loki smiles. Banner shifts himself and runs both hands down his face. When he re-emerges, his eyes are serious. 

“Alien or not, you’re sentient. Scientifically speaking--Biochemically, that is--your brain is similar enough to ours that you can change. And, and you’re immortal, so that must be a big capacity.” 

Loki sips at his tea, tasting fresh nettles and tentative blossoms, letting that thought roll around in his head. He knows that Banner is basing those assumptions on Thor, an Aesir, but does that really matter? To Loki’s pride, perhaps. He steeples his fingers under his chin and returns his gaze to the swimming fireflies in the window. 

“Have you ever heard of nature over nurture?” Banner asks. 

Loki hesitates with his lips apart. “Your human psychology means little to me, Doctor.” 

“But not nothing,” Banner says. Loki has to chuckle in acknowledgement of the twist of his own words, a feat that very few would have achieved before his incarceration on this planet. He taps the rim of his teacup against his teeth, as Banner continues, “Genetics, or nature, doesn’t count for everything. The way you’re raised has gotta have some impact, or so the argument goes. Might be worth checking out?” 

Loki considers that for a long time. “Perhaps.” He rises to his feet. “Thank you again for the tea.” 

Banner smiles at Loki as he leaves, but the smile is distracted. Loki wonders what the Doctor is thinking now. 

* * *

 

On the floor, spitting blood. Loki had used his magic to animate the punching bag, and in a moment of distraction, it swung around into his back. Although the steel ribbing was unable to cause any damage, his own teeth were able to pierce his tongue. 

“You good?” Steven drops to a crouch in front of Loki, and Loki makes a point of rising to his feet. He wipes blood with the back of his hand, studying the pale colour as if he has never seen it before. 

“A momentary distraction,” Loki says. Steven snorts and then remembers himself. His face settles into a frown. 

“You don’t get distracted.” 

“Did I write that in my dossier, Captain?” Loki replies coolly, taking off the wraps around his knuckles. He flexes his fingers. The bite in his tongue is already healing over. Steven shifts from foot to foot with a sigh. 

“One more round and then we call it a day?” He asks. 

“That would be wise,” Loki replies, but his mind has already left the training room. 

* * *

 

“And the point of this exercise?” Loki asks, biting into an apple. He is seated cross-legged on a table in Stark’s laboratory, which Banner has begun to very slowly take over for his own. Banner’s battered and oft-repaired equipment is spilling out of the corner that Stark allocated to him, and into the rest of the lab. While Stark likes to keep his working space immaculate, Banner wants to keep it homely. The dichotomy is amusing. 

“Well, you’ve got a brain, right?” Banner is on his knees on the floor beside a coffin-esque machine called an MRI, squinting at something on his laptop screen. He mutters a string of numerical nonsense under his breath. 

“Correct,” Loki prompts.

“I’ve had to make some adjustments, taking into account that you’re not human and everything, but I think that this will work. It’ll take a--”

“You have explained to me what the machine does, but not why you wish for me to get inside it,” Loki says in a sarcastic tone, and Banner hesitates and bites his bottom lip. He brushes his hands on his trousers and comes around to the same side of the screen as Loki so that they can speak without the crackle of the microphone. 

“Have you heard of PTSD?” Banner asks, with the expression of a man treading on thin ice. Loki blinks once. Twice. Sets his jaw.

“I am familiar.” Loki’s voice has dropped to a cold murmur. “What are you implying?” 

“Nothing!” But Banner is too quick. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay, look… when someone has something going on in their brain, like depression or PTSD, it shows up as a physical thing. If someone is a psychopath, you can see that too. I just think--if you let me take an image, I can tell you what you are.” 

“This is one offer, Doctor Banner, that I would rather decline.” Loki tosses the apple core in the bin and slips off the table, stalking for the door. 

“I’m not a good person, Loki. Not naturally, anyway.” Banner doesn’t quite touch Loki’s arm, but it’s near enough and Loki whirls on him. “But I kinda have to be, with the big guy always waiting to pounce. The--The irony is… living the way I do, having to be nice all the time, it’s not good. People say I’m kind and selfless and awkward, but I never get to blow off steam. I never get to recognise my bad side.” 

“Are you saying… do you expect me to believe... that you are an act?” The tension has flooded from Loki’s limbs. He stands slack in front of Banner, too stunned even to keep his posture perfect. 

“Yes--No. Look, I’m trying to say that nobody expects you to be a saint, but you can make better choices! If you would let me show you, let me prove that you can, that you--” Banner sucks in a deep breath, two fingers against his pulse. Loki realises that a vein in Banner’s forehead is threatening green. 

“It’s… it’s okay,” Loki says, and the words are clunky on his tongue. He pats Banner on the shoulder. 

Loki’s head is swimming. He needs to be somewhere else now, somewhere alone. He thought that Banner was a neutral party to all of this; that Banner would provide a simple answer. But Banner has only further muddied the waters. 

“If you’ll be so kind as to excuse me.” Loki steps further back. His hand finds the door behind him. 

“Sure,” Banner mutters and fumbles something from his lab coat pocket. “Just… Humour me. Plan B?” He hands it to Loki, and Loki accepts. 

Outside in the hallway, he examines the book that Banner had given him. It is small, unassuming, and entirely  _ human _ . Holding a book without any energy of its own is strange. Loki runs his finger down the worn spine and frowns at where the title has been rubbed off. Leather dust stains his fingers red. He flips it open. 

_ The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde _ , says the title. Loki still doesn’t understand, but he appreciates the book. At the very least, he thinks as he walks back to his room, it will provide some light reading for the night. 

* * *

 

As it turns out, the reading is anything but light. Loki does not finish the book that night, and it remains in his brain all day. A human fiction is the last thing that Loki would have expected to affect him, but here he is, deeply and painfully affected. 

Did Banner know?  _ Did he know _ ? Those first few thoughts were tinged with panic and Loki forced himself to reel them back in. Only Steven and Stark knew what had happened to Loki, and they didn’t understand. They didn’t know what he had felt when his skin turned blue and he had looked into the Jotunn’s eyes and realised himself to be everything that everyone he loved hated. Words couldn’t do that feeling justice, and although the wound had long turned into a scab, it still hurt. 

And as the days pass and Loki continues to slog through the story, he realizes that Banner does know, after a fashion. Banner, too, can become a monster; has a side of himself that nobody loves but many people would gladly use.  _ Abuse _ , even. The bad side. His own personal Hyde. 

It takes him the rest of that week to finish  _ Jekyll and Hyd _ e, and he savours every last word, runs each line through his head on a loop until something clicks. Loki finally understands. Alone in his room, he collapses back onto his bed of stone and laughs the bitter, brittle laughter of the unwillingly redeemed. 

He finds Banner on the roof, a blanket wrapped around him and a book in hand. Banner only raises an eyebrow when Loki appears, dizzy and thrumming with something that could either be anger or joy. Loki holds out the book with bloodless knuckles. 

“Very good, Doctor,” Loki says. His voice sounds strange to his own ears. 

“You liked it then?” Banner’s amusement is poorly concealed, and Loki cannot keep still. He paces to and fro, and only realises when he looks down that he is walking on air. 

“This… this divide, and this inability to reconcile it is the most fascinating concept you humans have shown me yet.” Loki runs a hand through his hair. Magic is bristling at his fingertips. His very  _ seiðr  _ is on fire. “You had no right to challenge everything I know about myself, to make me question what I have spent more lifetimes than you could ever comprehend shaping myself into. What do you want from me, Banner?” he spits out Banner’s name like a curse, and in the heat of his anger, it very well could be. Loki has never known such a fury before, and in the back of his mind, he is afraid. His glamour slips. 

Banner holds out a cup of tea. Loki stares at it. 

“Sit down,” Banner says in the mildest voice possible. Loki’s body obeys, even though his mind is seething at the prospect. He takes the drink and gazes into it. “You’re wrong, you know? You don’t know anything about yourself.” 

“I’m sorry?” Loki sputters, he can’t help it. “I am ancient, I have had--” 

“More lifetimes than I could ever comprehend, I know.” Banner nods sagely. “But you’ve had a big change recently, and that’s gonna impact everything you think you know. I’m guessing by your… how you look now, that you’re not the same race as Thor either. That’s gotta be a sore spot.” 

Loki snorts. “You have no idea.” 

“The point is that I do, remember?” 

Loki looks at Banner, whose eyes are crinkled and whose smile is so genuine, and wonders how his mortal mind can comprehend the complexity of good and evil when Loki cannot. He then looks down at his cup. 

“How did you know I would be up here?” 

Banner’s laugh is a little too high-pitched. “I didn’t. I’ve been making two cups of tea every evening, just in case you were gonna to come yell at me. Tony asked me if the green guy can sit and have tea with me too now.” 

Loki chuckles and sips his drink. It has a more bitter tang tonight. He likes it. 

They sit in silence after that, watching the world flowing by far below them. Loki is feeling something that he has not felt in a long time; it reminds him of the quiet evenings spent with Thor before the whole world was ripped in two. Brotherhood. Simple companionship.  _ Likeness _ . 

“Thank you.” 

Banner shrugs. “Oh it’s no trouble, I usually make too much tea any… that’s not what you mean, is it?” 

“No,” Loki chuckles, startled to find tears in the sound. He inhales through his teeth and leans back to look at the alien sky. “You’re the first person who has made an effort to speak to me on common ground, without treating me like glass. Without an ulterior motive. Not even Thor was able to do so.” 

“So, what? Does that mean we’re friends now?” 

Loki looks at Banner sidelong and the corner of his mouth twitches. 

“Let us not leap before we can fly,” Loki says, and grins from ear to ear.  



End file.
